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More following.

Yamraj: ‘Now?’

Savitri: ‘Give my father a hundred sons, so that his dynasty will not die out.’

Yamraj: ‘Done. Now go.’

She kept on, his shadow. Yamraj turned around. ‘What do you want now?’

‘Grant me too a hundred sons.’

‘Granted.’

The following does not stop. On and on and on.

For a mortal to come so far is not seemly, the Lord wishes to shake her off. He turns around and thunders, ‘Now what?’

The listeners hold their breath at the anticipated climax.

‘Oh Lord, you have granted me a hundred sons. I am a pious woman. How can I have a hundred sons without my husband?’

And yes, the Lord of Death is stumped! ‘Take your husband,’ he finally growls. ‘Return, you will find him alive.’

Savitri races back to the jungle to find her husband sitting up.

‘Savitri, I had the strangest dream.’

Savitri smiles, listens, tells him what has happened. Satyavan cannot believe it. They return home.

To find Dyumatsen with his eyesight restored, and a messenger coming to say that the usurper has fled the kingdom, and all is his.

Disbelief melts into an acknowledgement of this woman’s power.

Sona closes the katha book with tears in her eyes. She too, like Savitri, has sacrificed for her family.

‘See,’ she says to her listening daughter, ‘this is what you must be like.’

XII

Ajay’s wedding

In her parents’ house Nisha’s studies began to slip, there just wasn’t the atmosphere. No space was free from noise or people. Her schoolbooks were only occasionally hauled out as she sat in the veranda away from the family. From here she could see the children playing in the park, could hear their voices, could see mosquitoes buzzing about, big as flies.

In the eleventh final exams she got two compartments. She would have to repeat her Pol. Science and Economics exams in order to pass.

‘Maybe she is spending too much time with Maji,’ remarked Yashpal upon this news. ‘The girl has a loving heart, but she shouldn’t go from one extreme to another. Still, I am glad we brought her back, she is so happy here.’

‘What is there in happiness? A girl has to be happy everywhere,’ replied his wife tartly, knowing it was impossible to disillusion him about Maji. The man saw what he wanted to see. ‘Besides, she is hopeless at cooking. Asha is ten times faster than she is. Her real education is in the kitchen.’

Meanwhile Prem Nath had to struggle mightily with himself when he heard that Nisha had got a compartment. A compartment! Nisha, of all girls – where had his teaching gone? And this just with Ajay’s engagement. When he actually got married, how much she would study God only knew.

‘You can go there and help her,’ remarked Rupa foolishly.

Rupa’s love for Nisha was the same whether she was in this house or that. But Prem Nath’s affection needed the certainty of continuity. He sighed and picked up his
Bhagvad Gita
. The virtues of non-attachment were all listed there, as was the importance of doing your duty. This fine balance between the two was what he had to strive for. With the practice that was about to be afforded him it might even be possible to realise in this lifetime.

Nisha for her part was not aware of these dark thoughts in her uncle’s breast. She avoided him when he came to visit because she had done badly and let him down.

Raju had done as badly, but he didn’t seem to be bothered. It was not fair. If she had been in this house from the beginning, she would be able to fail and still sleep at night. She had grown to like the ease of talking, listening, being together, even though her hands were as yet clumsy around the vegetables she cut during these sessions.

Ajay’s marriage took place a year after his grandfather’s death. The girl was from Meerut, provincial, adaptable, shy, sweet, caring, homely, devoted, and trained to put the interests of her new family above everything. Not a spoiled Delhi girl, announced Sushila with an air of personal accomplishment.

At these pronouncements Asha looked self-conscious. After all, the appellations applied to her as well.

Nisha was involved in most of the wedding preparations. ‘Why couldn’t they wait till the children’s board exams were over?’ grumbled Prem Nath often, as uncle and aunt were besieged with demands for assistance.

‘Maji is so weak and frail. They want her blessings on this union.’

‘You mean she shouldn’t die before Ajay’s marriage.’

‘It will not be good to postpone it, you know that.’

‘He is only twenty-one.’

Rupa did not bother to comment. For an intelligent man, it was surprising the things her husband could not see. What were boys to do with their urges if they did not marry? Once the passions of youth were calmed, he could settle down to the main things in life, family and money; it was plain as the mango juice that was drying in the sun for aam papar.

Her thoughts wandered to the clothes that would be made, to the food that would be prepared, to her own role in everything. She was indispensable to her sister, she knew that, and she looked forward to weeks of involvement in family functions.

Throughout the wedding preparations Sona paid Nisha’s clothes special attention. The girl was now seventeen, it was time that clothes were engaged to do their job properly, to set off her looks, as hers had been done so many years ago at a wedding in Delhi.

‘Didi is trying to get Nisha married,’ commented Rupa to her husband.

The husband snorted. ‘I told you her mind would not be on her studies.’

‘Oh-ho, you also are not taking so much care,’ said Rupa, stung into commenting on something she had observed. ‘When you go there you do not even look at her. She is hurt, I can tell.’

‘Why should I go on taking care? Am I a fool? Something borrowed is never yours, you should remember that.’

‘A sister’s child is not a borrowed thing,’ said Rupa angrily. ‘For your own sister’s children you are ready to give your life, your money, everything.’

‘I have not done less for your sister’s child, Roop. In fact I have done more, nurtured her, cared for her, sweated over her, evening after evening. I would have given money too if that is what she needed,’ said Prem Nath firmly. ‘But I have no rights over her, nothing to counteract the mother’s foolish criticism, and that too after devotion to her child for eleven years. A person can also feel used.’

Rupa said nothing. It was true, a person could feel used.

At home Asha watched the goings-on jealously. She was the only other young woman in the house, but how different was the attention that came to her, how inferior the clothes, how meagre the thin gold chain – hardly a chain at all, you couldn’t even see it. All the time it was Nisha, Nisha, Nisha.

She had the comfort of complaining to her husband. ‘Sona Maji is very worried about her marriage, though they say she is so pretty, there is obviously something wrong with her.’

Her husband scolded her. ‘Arre, what is it to you? It will be good when Nisha marries and leaves the house. At least I won’t have to hear about her every day.’

Asha, stung, retorted, ‘How do you hear about her every day? Only when she is making a fool of herself in the kitchen do I say anything.’

‘You are obsessed with the girl, all the time talking about her – I am sick of it,’ said Vicky angrily, clearing his throat and spitting emphatically over the railing of the terrace.

‘You are sick of it?’

‘I, yes, I.’

‘What about me? I have to keep hearing how high and mighty you think she is.’

‘Only because you keep complaining about her.’

The fight continued, feeding on itself endlessly.

Sona to her husband: ‘If someone from a good family likes Nisha, our worries will be over.’

The father’s heart contracted. He had hardly known what it was like to live with a daughter, and soon she would go away for good.

‘She is too young,’ he replied.

‘Nonsense,’ retorted the mother. ‘I was this age when you saw me.’

‘That was different,’ said Yashpal, his voice softening. ‘An earlier time.’

‘She is old enough. If someone likes her and their horoscopes match, what is the problem?’

‘There is no need to push her into responsibilities.’

The mother suppressed her irritation. When the brilliant match came along, then was the time to argue.

Ajay married, and inexplicably Nisha emerged unengaged. She had stood out like a flower, in pink, lilac, and magenta. There had been enquiries, it was true, but they were from insignificant shopkeepers – nothing really big. With their background and Nisha’s looks, why should they settle for something small?

With a consideration that had not marked her life, the grandmother was found dead in her bed a full month after the wedding.

‘She could not stay in this world after Baoji died,’ sighed Yashpal to his wife. ‘It is testimony to her love for us that she managed to live eighteen months after he left. She had great courage, great courage.’ He shook his shaven head.

His wife looked at him. He was so noble, always seeing the good in everybody. A dutiful husband, a loving son. Within a year and a half he had lost both his parents. Twice he had had his head shaved, twice gone to Haridwar to immerse ashes and bones in the Ganges.

The Board results were out. Raju in Class X had barely scraped through with a 45 per cent overall aggregate. As for Nisha, her uncle’s training had stood her in good stead, despite his opinions. With a family wedding, she had still been able to obtain a 70 per cent in the Humanities.

This was respectable enough for her parents to distribute sweets to all and sundry. The uncle was thanked profusely for the care he had taken of his niece.

Now for the future.

Theirs was a family that believed in fate, in predestination, in the sins of your past life catching up in this, and God’s firm hand over everything. There must be a reason for Nisha’s 70 per cent which needed to be carefully examined.

Nisha was a mangli. A mangli, destined to marry unfortunately, destined for misery, unless a similar manglik could be found, with a similar fate and horoscope. To do this would take time, and during that time –

Perhaps an education? Not too much, just a bit. With her marks the very fancy colleges were out, but they were simple people, they wanted a simple, down-to-earth, no-nonsense girls’ college, where she would not get any ideas.

The family discuss Nisha’s future endlessly, parade their own experiences, and evaluate her achievement against their sense of female destiny.

‘Nowadays a BA is essential,’ says Sushila, who had brought this degree along with her dowry. ‘She can switch to a Correspondence Course if her in-laws want her to stay at home.’

‘People are suspicious of brides that are very educated. Too many ideas make it difficult to adjust,’ replies Sona, resenting the slur on her own twelfth-class status.

‘Education is not a bad thing,’ comments Asha safely.

‘These college students are just loafing the whole day,’ points out Vicky. ‘You want to learn something, you go to work.’

‘How can girls do service?’ titters his small-town wife.

‘As it is, Nisha is so bad in kitchen work, she might get totally out of control in college,’ says Sona anxiously.

‘Seema has all a housewife’s qualities, and she is a BA,’ eulogises Sushila of Ajay’s spouse.

Seema blushes and says nothing. She is still a new bride, and modesty lies heavy upon her.

‘If anything happens in the girl’s later life, she is not completely dependent,’ interposes Rupa. She knows her views should be confined to her sister, who would recycle them as she thought fit. But she couldn’t help herself. In this day and age there were still people wondering whether girls should get an education. And this a girl whom her husband had slaved over for years. How could they let all that go to waste? ‘It would be a shame to not educate her further,’ she continued in a careful, unemotional manner. ‘Let her do English Honours, not too much work, reading story books.’

Her sister nudged her. It should not be said that the aunt’s influence outweighed family opinions.

Nisha liked the idea of doing English Honours. She was tired of mugging dates and facts. A little relaxation would be nice.

In the end Durga Bai College was decided on. On campus, all girls, with a reputation of steady mediocrity. It would do nicely for a girl waiting to get married.

XIII

Nisha enters college

Nisha entered DBC with confidence. In school English had required little preparation. She anticipated a continuation of the same, but knew it didn’t matter whether she achieved or not.

Her family’s attitude to college proved sustaining. Higher studies were just a time pass, it was not as though she was going to use her education. Working was out of the question, and marriage was around the corner.

In college Nisha’s best friend was Pratibha, a tall, dark, lanky girl who habitually dressed in shiny pink. She had a flat chest and hair that shone with oil. Her family was poor, a fact she compensated for by being ambitious. She had joined the NCC programme, hoping that this would lead to a government job with the police. It was her belief that an English Honours degree would look good at the interview stage, though she felt it a crying shame that such was the case. ‘Why is it that Indian languages are not considered on a par with English in our own country?’ she demanded passionately. ‘If you haven’t had an English education, what are you to do? Will they say you cannot become a police officer?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Nisha, for whom any prospect of work was equivalent to going to the moon. She was doing English because she was sick and tired of studying. Poor Prem Nath would not have liked to see his niece laugh off excellence so easily, and Nisha felt a pang of guilt which she stoutly ignored.

Through the corridors these two friends walked, occasionally cutting a class when they hadn’t read the text – so much to read yaar, these teachers expect you to study all the time, complained Pratibha. At home Mummy doesn’t keep well, and I have to get up early to make the lunch, and then when I come home, I start dinner. And on Sunday the whole family is there – where is the time, I wish they could understand.